There are those who still don’t believe global warming, or climate change, exists. There are also those who believe that the world is flat, and that the Queen of England is responsible for all the evil on the planet. What we need to do is stop listening to all such people, right now. I don’t care what you think of Al Gore. You can’t watch his Oscar-winning movie An Inconvenient Truth and not conclude that the planet is in grave danger.
The fact is that most people who deny the cataclysmic dangers of climate change are doing so for one, or more, of three reasons: Financial gain, some crackbrained ideology, or the hope that they can give their pathetic lives some meaning by getting on the media.
The evidence of global warming is overwhelming. There is, indeed, a lot we don’t know. As Michigan State’s Tom Dietz says, “What we know about climate change is both complex and uncertain.” Yet there is good reason to believe that it will affect many critical elements of Michigan’s life and economy. That’s why I think MSU’s Global Warming and the Great Lakes Conference this week will be critically important. That is, if influential people pay attention. It will feature some of the leading experts on various aspects of climate change, who have studied how it affects everything from agriculture to snow.
But I think that conferences like this can also be harmful, if they become a substitute for action rather than a spur. The time-honored solution for the cowardly, the indecisive and those who know they are wrong always has been to say that something needs more study. The tobacco industry did that for decades. We’ve been studying global warming to death.
No, we don’t know everything. We will never know everything. We do know is that the more we spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the worse it gets for everybody. We also know there are things we can do about that, with vehicle emissions, for example. Yes, there will be people who will fight this because they care more about short-term profits.Perhaps what we need is a huge fight, and leaders who aren’t afraid of one.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, a man without the use of his legs, had more backbone than our last three presidents combined. He loved “to roll up my sleeves instead of twiddling my thumbs.”
“I would like it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and lust for power met their match,“ he said. “I would like it said of my second that in it they met their master.” I can’t imagine anyone with the guts to say that today.
FDR never heard of global warming. But he knew about big problems. A reporter once asked him what his ideology was. “I try something, and if it doesn’t work, I try something else.” If you need an ideology to save the planet, that sounds like a pretty good one to me.
Ahh...the DEBATE about climate change.
I've been wondering why there is a "debate" ever since we had that giant "Ozone Hole" over Antarctica. That was a long time ago, now.
In fact, if you use your brain, it is rather simplistic to conclude that it is impossible that global warming is not happening.
The atmosphere is a substance. Greenhouse gasses are other substances. Anytime you put two different substances together, the stuff that results will behave differently than either of the parts you put together. This is a fact of science. Keep in mind that, if that didn't happen, it would be physically impossible to brew a cup of tea. This scientific fact was first observed when people invented tea several thousand years ago...probably even before. Our politicians could really stand to get with the times already.
But, moving along...I once saw a science fiction movie about global warming. This was a "worst-case" scenario movie. During the movie, there were several politicians that did not believe or care about global warming. They fought for the big bad companies until the planet was almost destroyed. At the end of the movie, a rebel group captured one of the politicians, and used a helicopter to fly directly to the middle of what used to be the great lakes, before they boiled off. The rebels left the politician in the middle of the new desert to die of thirst and heat exhaustion, and he did. If we don't stop global warming soon, then I hope to God that our politicians live until a time when that can happen to them too.
Posted by: Me again | March 14, 2007 at 05:02 PM